Amazon Web Services (AWS) joins the Cloud Native Computing Foundation

Amazon Web Services or AWS has announced its joining of the world body on container standards, i.e., the Cloud Native Computing Foundation today. With this announcement, it joins the ranks of Google, IBM, Microsoft and Red Hat in the highly lucrative containers business.

Application containerization does not require an entire virtual machine launch for every application and the system is a virtualization method of Operating System (OS) level.

The method virtualization method deploys and operates distributed applications. A single control host operates various isolated systems and only a single kernel is accessed.

AWS has chosen to go the proprietary way in most of its offerings until date. Well, if one (AWS) is that big and powerful and has that big a market share in the space, they sure can afford to.

One area that AWS is not leading in the market is that of containers; that honor belongs to Kubernetes, an open source container management tool originally developed by Google in-house and then donated to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

The message that AWS sends across with this move of it coming on board with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation is that basic standards in the industry do matter. AWS sitting on the sidelines had let Kubernetes take a leading edge in the container management market with its open source platform instead of AWS’ build and buy mode of operation.

AWS understood that Kubernetes was winning the battle, and with other major players joining the foray, it did not want to be left grappling in a corner, and therefore, came on board with a common set of industry standards.

It is widely accepted that one should choose their battles smartly and this was one war AWS did not want to fight to lose its sheen in the process, so it promptly came on board with CNCF.

The Move

This move of AWS joining the CNCF has led to the cementing of the containerization standard world over giving a clearer path to the future adopters. Containerization is all the rage at present in larger companies due to its ability to break down the application into discrete manageable chunks, thereby making their updating and maintenance a heck of a lot easier and simpler.

This also leads to a clear differentiation between the developer tasks and operation tasks in the DevOps model.

Standards provide the basic architecture over which each player can build using their own tools, like Red Hat’s OpenShift and Microsoft’s Azure Container Service.

The client industry appreciates certain standards, as it helps them to believe in the working of a certain technology in a certain way regardless of who designed or built it.

Traditionally the lack of standards has led to delays in the implementation and adoption of technology. Imagine, if the world wouldn't have agreed to the basic protocol of the World Wide Web, today's internet scenario would have certainly looked very different from what it is at the moment.

This is what AWS has proven today; that a common set of standards do indeed matter to be in the game for the long run if one wants to succeed.